Tuesday, November 15, 2011

My belly is full of pork and my lungs are swimming in cigarette smoke, but I don’t feel like forking over $60 to enjoy my Chinese girlfriend’s company tonight. Saipan is where all of Asia comes to sin, so I’m sure she’s busy with a more affluent gentleman.

This oft-forgotten American territory, officially known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (of which Saipan is the capital and largest island), has long established its notoriety as a hotspot for international sex tourists, commonly known as “mongerers.” That’s because it is swarming with sweethearts of the me-love-you-long-time variety. The Marianas boast the world’s greatest female-to-male gender disparity, with 74 men for every 100 women.

Laid off in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff/Tom DeLay garment-industry scandal, these former garment workers chose more lucrative careers as sex workers. White-knight liberals did what any spiteful cock block would do: They ruined everyone else’s fun.

The garment industry created tens of thousands of jobs for residents and foreign workers, but the story goes that corporate executives blatantly exploited the labor force, overworking and underpaying workers in “sweatshop-like conditions.”

Six would accomplish about anything, I do believe.:) Used to drink them on the front porch of my place in Binh Duong.========

Via Matthew

Every now and then, I notice someone, often an anthropologist, saying that human cognitive capability just has to be the same in all populations. According to Loring Brace, “Human cognitive capacity , founded on the ability to learn a language, is of equal survival value to all human groups, and consequently there is no valid reason to expect that there should be average differences in intellectual ability among living human populations. “

There are a lot of ideas and assumptions in that quote, and as far as I can tell, all of them are wrong. First, you really need to note that populations today sure look as if they differ in average intellectual ability. They vary a lot in measured IQ: almost three standard deviations from lowest to highest. Some pairs of populations show big differences in scholastic results, and interventions to the tune of tens of billions of dollars haven’t had much effect.

Populations vary tremendously in the fraction that contributes original work in science and technology – and that variation mostly agrees with the distribution of IQ. Which is what you would expect, really - the fraction that exceeds a high threshold drops rapidly as the population mean decreases.

Nobody knows exactly what drove the evolution of human intelligence. That includes Loring Brace. In particular, nobody knows that it was just one factor, and certainly nobody knows that it was just one factor that was effectively uniform worldwide. Mind you, even that wouldn’t be enough.

In order for a society to function, there has to be a certain level of trust. Each day when we leave our homes, we take for granted that most people are not going to attack us for no reason, that there will only be isolated incidents of theft in our community and that rioting and violence are not going to erupt in the streets. Whether we realize it or not, we depend on the fact that the vast majority of the people around us are going to act in a civilized manner. Unfortunately, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear. When I was growing up, I was taught that challenging times reveal our true character. There are many that believe that the declining economy is causing a lot of the chaos that we are now witnessing, but perhaps what is going on is that these challenging economic times are simply revealing the character that has been there all along. For decades, a "false prosperity" that was fueled by unprecedented amounts of debt has masked a lot of the internal rot that has taken hold in America. But now that our prosperity is crumbling, our lack of values is becoming startlingly clear.

Greed, corruption and extreme self-centeredness have deeply infected our society. We see this on Wall Street and in Congress, and we see this among those that are trying to survive on the mean streets of our largest cities.

Our nation is breaking down on every level. If by some miracle we were able to fix our economy, that would mask our problems for a while, but it would not solve them.

Unfortunately, as I write about nearly every day, there are a whole host of indications that our economy is about to get even worse. When it does, millions of Americans will become even more desperate, and as we are now seeing all over this country, desperate people do desperate things.

The following are 22 signs that the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is starting to disappear....

The notion that the War Between the States was prosecuted by the North for slavery abolition is a long-standing myth; the Northern war aim from the beginning was to prevent the political independence of the Southern States and force them into a revolutionary and consolidated union with the North.

Bernhard Thuersam, ChairmanNorth Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commissionwww.ncwbts150.com"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"=========

Northern Opinion Against Abolition:

“As late as 1854, the South divided on the Homestead Act along east-west and party lines...almost as markedly as the North. Again and again the South seems not to have been united on any economic policies, even those connected with slavery, but only on the issue of slavery qua slavery; it was the sectional crisis over slavery that conveyed regional unity into economic legislation and other issues.

Having found these actual economic conflicts insubstantial, many writers…conclude that it must have been the apprehension of future policies on economics and slavery that led the South to secede. This argument is hard to refute, but it is rendered suspect by the fact that it often seems to be reached by precisely this process of elimination. It is true enough that the Republican platform of 1860 contained an economic program not altogether to Southern liking; but none of these proposals were new, and it was, after all, the South’s bolting of the Democratic party in 1860 that made Lincoln’s election inevitable.

One can finds statements reflection all sorts of apprehensions and fears, but there is also an abundance of contradictory testimony, and unless it can be shown that those fears manifested themselves into actual behavior or pressures or incentives, or in some way reflected a perception of real trends, the argument is unconvincing.

This leaves till last the most straightforward motive, involving both economics and slavery: the north wanted to abolish slavery, and the slaveowners of the South wanted to retain their valuable property. The trouble is, while the latter is surely true, the former is not. It is not just that one is hard put to find Northerners with an economic interest in abolishing slavery. Northern opinion and dominant political groups simply did not advocate such measures. [Author Lee] Benson goes so far to assert:

“Had Northerners held a referendum in November, 1860, solely on a proposition requiring the Federal government to require the Southern State governments to abolish slavery by some form of legislative action, probably no more than 2 per cent, almost certainly no more than 5 per cent, of the Northern electorate would have voted “Aye.”

The issue of abolition is of course different from the question of the extension of slavery into the territories, on which free farmers and miners had an economic interest buttressed by racial prejudice. [This] allowed Republican leaders to base a free-soil doctrine on moral hostility to slavery, while at the same time explaining to their abolitionist constituency why they advocated no action whatsoever against slavery itself.

Thus as immigrants increasingly took the places of native-born workers during the 1840s and 1850s, a community of economic interest began to emerge…The 1860 platform of the Republican party, and its slogans (“Vote yourself a farm,” “Vote yourself a tariff”) seem a perfect embodiment of the idea.

In case anyone is still wondering what Occucommies do when they need the bathroom:

As the OWS mob loves to chant, the whole world is watching. The harder they try to mainstream these animals, the more surely Democrats and the liberal establishment media will go down with them in the court of public opinion.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House voted in favor of a procedural motion to allow concealed carry legislation to come to the floor for a vote on Wednesday.

The bill, H.R. 822, is intended to honor the American peoples’ right to keep and bear arms when traveling from state to state.

But while well-intentioned, H.R. 822 contains several flaws.

Vermont Gun Owners Cut Out of Bill

For starters, the bill does not protect Vermont-style carry. Residents of that state do not need a permit in order to exercise their right to carry a firearm. But in order to benefit from the reciprocity bill, Vermonters would be forced to obtain a permit.

When GOA pointed out this problem, supporters of the legislation said Vermont residents can “just get an out-of-state permit.”

But that answer is unacceptable.

Why should existing liberties be sacrificed in the rush to pass a faulty bill? Why should a state with exemplary gun laws be, in effect, “punished” for being too pro-gun?

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) offered a real solution to this issue with his bill, HR 2900. Rep. Broun’s bill protects the Vermont law and those of states that follow Vermont’s lead.

Constitutional Carry, wherein citizens can carry a firearm without first having to prove their worthiness to the police or government bureaucrats, is spreading to states around the country.

Alaska, Arizona and Wyoming now have Constitutional Carry laws based on the Vermont model. Montana passed such a law that covers 98% of the state, and Texas passed a “constitutional carry lite” law that applies to firearms carried in a vehicle.

These new laws represent the efforts of hundreds of thousands of grassroots gun owners working in their states to restore their constitutional rights.

The bill coming to the floor on Wednesday will deter such efforts by requiring state residents to possess a permit in order to be able to carry interstate.

The Broun bill is Constitutional Carry-friendly and would not undermine the work underway in many states to pass laws similar to Vermont’s.

Pass the Best Bill Possible

Supporters of H.R. 822 argue that this bill is the best that can be passed. That pragmatic argument is simply not true.

In 2009, a Senate bill virtually identical to H.R. 2900 garnered 58 votes. And that was before the last election, which improved the Senate significantly.

The “best bill possible” is the one that already has the votes in the Senate to pass. The supporters of H.R. 822 instead chose to move a weaker bill in the chamber where gun owners have more support.

Supporters of H.R. 822 also want NO amendments (even ones that are pro-gun) to pass to the underlying bill. But an amendment is exactly what is needed to correct the deficiencies in this bill.

Contact Your Representative Right Away

Please take action quickly, as this bill is set to come to the floor on Wednesday afternoon.

GOA has provided a prewritten message you can send asking your Representative to cosponsor H.R. 2900 and to urge the House leaders to fix the flaws in the concealed carry reciprocity bill.

Attorney General Holder: “[O]f the nearly 94,000 [weapons] that have been recovered that have been traced in Mexico in recent years, over 64,000 of those guns were sourced to the United States of America; 64,000 of 94,000 guns sourced to this country.”

FACTThe definition of a “U.S. source gun” used in these often cited statistics was not created by the ATF and is overly broad. It includes guns manufactured in the United States even if never sold by a federally licensed gun dealer in the United States. Such weapons may have been legally exported to foreign governments or stolen before falling into the wrong hands. That cannot be properly blamed on Americans exercising their Second Amendment freedoms.

According to ATF statistics, of the 21,313 guns submitted for tracing by the government of Mexico in 2009, only 5,444 of them (25 percent) traced back to federally licensed gun dealers in the United States. Similarly, in 2010, of 7,971 guns submitted for tracing by the government of Mexico, only 2,945 (37 percent) traced back to federally licensed gun dealers in the U.S.

The reason for the large disparity between the overall numbers of guns submitted in those two years is that in late 2009, the government of Mexico provided the United States with a large list of guns it had been stockpiling for years. Accordingly, 2009’s numbers do not reflect guns that were seized exclusively in 2009, but rather for a number of the preceding years.

Additionally, any statistics on the percentage of such guns tracing back to the United States are further skewed because of selection bias. As it has been widely noted, the government of Mexico only provides guns to the United States for tracing that they already have reason to believe originated here. There is no reason to submit for tracing guns that are known to originate in Mexico.

In a November 8, 2011, court filing, the Chief of ATF’s Firearms Operations Division made a declaration that “in 2008, of the approximately 30,000 firearms that the Mexican Attorney General’s Office informed ATF that it had seized, only 7,200, or one quarter of those firearms, were submitted to ATF for tracing.” Based on these statistics, it’s clear that the total sample of guns submitted for tracing is not representative of all the guns found in Mexico, and there isn’t evidence that the other 75 percent of those guns were sold in a U.S. gun store.

Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway filed a motion on behalf of the city today opposing a court order requiring the NYPD to allow Occupy Wall Street demonstrators back into Zuccotti Park. In filing the motion, Holloway asserted that "people who have a known history of violent interaction with the police” have been gathering in the park, and “makeshift items” that he said could be used as weapons, "such as cardboard tubes with metal pipes inside, had been observed among the occupiers' possessions." He also noted that after the October 1st Brooklyn Bridge march, "knives, mace and hypodermic needles were observed discarded on the roadway."

"It was our understanding that the protesters may have had a significant number of items that could potentially be used as weapons," Halloway writes in the motion, adding that there had been little to no crime in Zuccotti Park before the occupation began, but since there had been "73 misdemeanor and felony complaints" and about 50 arrests. Although the initial order to vacate (see below) promised demonstrators they would be allowed in—though without tents and sleeping bags—Bloomberg is now refusing to comply with the court order, and the park remains closed. A growing throng of demonstrators have gathered around it.

Justice Michael Stallman is expected to issue his decision around 3 p.m. In the meantime, here is Brookfield's letter to Bloomberg, which was sent to the Mayor yesterday. The letter urges the city to intervene in the interest of "public safety" and cites media reports of "violence, outbursts of bigotry, and escalating sanitary conditions."

No need to sit through this entire tedious speech that Obama delivered to APEC Sunday in Hawaii. Just come in around 35 minutes 17 seconds and you’ll be treated to another Moonbat Messiah geography lesson:

Details of Obama’s past are shrouded in secrecy, but most believe he grew up in Hawaii, when he wasn’t growing up in Indonesia. Yet he doesn’t seem to be aware that it is part of the United States, which maps tend to place in North America.

But then, the Manchurian Moonbat promised change. Maybe Hawaii now being in Asia is an aspect of his fundamental transformation. We’ll have to await clarification on whether it’s still one of the 60 states, whether the intercontinental railroad runs there, and whether any locals speak Austrian.

A federal judge has sealed the case against a man charged with murder in the killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. It's the only federal court case in which a weapon from the botched gun-walking program known as Operation Fast and Furious has turned up.

Until now, new details of the ongoing case against Manuel Osorio Arellanes were made available to the public. Osorio faces 14 charges including murder, assault, weapons charges and illegal re-entry.

Now the paper trail has gone dark. Even the records charging Osorio with murder are unavailable. Two of the guns found at the site of the murder had come from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) gun walking operation, which is evolving into a scandal.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department sought to manipulate reporters’ coverage of Operation Fast and Furious during the days preceding a November 1 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, new emails obtained by The Daily Caller indicate.

Emails between senior Justice Department officials and investigators in the office of Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley show that congressional staffers leading the investigation into Operation Fast and Furious requested information about Operation Wide Receiver — a Bush administration program – and other similar cases, more than a full month before the DOJ leaked information to selected media outlets on October 31.

The confirmation of a former aide to Attorney General Eric Holder to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces may be in peril over his response to questions posed by Arizona Sen. John McCain about his knowledge of Operation Fast and Furious. Kevin Ohlson, who worked as Holder’s chief of staff from January 2009 to January 2011, faces a confirmation hearing on Thursday for the post. The panel with jurisdiction is the Senate Armed Services Committee, of which McCain is the ranking Republican and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is chairman. In his response Monday to a questionnaire sent from McCain last week, both obtained by Fox News, Ohlson said he knew nothing about the operation while he was at the Justice Department.

Needless to say, Dreibelbis was surprised when two local policemen showed up and ordered him to remove his surveillance camera in the front of his store because it violated state wiretapping laws. Faced with the possible charges, Dreibelbis turned to The Rutherford Institute for advice where they have decided to file a federal lawsuit against the city of Franklin for violation of his constitutional rights of businessman using monitoring device.

John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute made the following comments concerning what happened to Dreibelbis,

“Nevertheless two police officers approached him and said he was violating Pennsylvania’s wiretapping laws and they would have to arrest him if he didn’t put away his video recorder. “He came to us and now we’ve filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the police saying they’re violating his right to free speech.

“For police to suggest that this activity violates wiretapping laws is absurd. The ramifications of this kind of government mindset does not bode well for the future of freedom.

“There’s actually a case I saw recently where a man was on his own private property filming the police arresting somebody. They entered his property. He informed the police that it was his property and they pushed him down and grabbed his camera. So there’s sort of a paranoia developing.”

So let me get this straight. In the state of Pennsylvania, it is considered to be illegal wiretapping to video anyone without their permission. If that is the case, then what I want to know is how banks can legally use surveillance cameras without permission to record everyone that walks through the doors of bank.

Or what about the surveillance cameras used by so many businesses both inside the stores and those trained on the parking lots?

Or What about those municipalities that use red light cameras to catch people running the traffic signals?

Or what about a tourist in Philadelphia that takes videos of famous landmarks such as Independence Hall and there just happens to be other people that inadvertently get filmed?

Or better yet, what about the dashboard mounted cameras in police cars that record people without their permission?

It seems that someone at Franklin city hall has a personal vendetta out for Mr. Dreibelbis or there is a different set of standards for government and law enforcement agencies than for private citizens and business owners.

It will be interesting to see the outcome of this case and what ramifications if any it may have.

First, let’s establish some historical context here. The land on which the VMFA sits was once a camp for Confederate veterans, known as Robert E. Lee Camp No. 1, also known as the “Old Soldiers’ Home.” The camp was formed in 1884 as a home for needy, wounded, and infirm Confederate veterans after the war. It was purchased and maintained by donations from their fellow veterans, both Union and Confederate. The camp covered roughly 36 acres and housed hundreds of veterans over the years. When the last resident veteran passed away in 1941, the land was deeded to the Commonwealth of Virginia. Over the years, the land would be used for two of Richmond’s best known landmarks on Boulevard: the VMFA and the Virginia Historical Society. The only surviving buildings from the original camp are the headquarters of the camp, known as the Robinson House, and the Confederate War Memorial Chapel (also known as the Pelham Chapel).

On Sunday, March 21, 2010, the day the House of Representatives passed President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, then-Solicitor General Elena Kagan and famed Supreme Court litigator and Harvard Law Prof. Laurence Tribe, who was then serving in the Justice Department, had an email exchange in which they discussed the pending health-care vote, according to documents the Department of Justice released late Wednesday to the Media Research Center, CNSNews.com's parent organization, and to Judicial Watch.

“I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,” Kagan said to Tribe in one of the mails.

People used everything they could for their protection, from most primitive things like throwing rocks to more sophisticated kind of traps made with explosives, usually those kind of traps required knowledge so they were rare. People invented some traps or something like false traps, everything was allowed in order to keep yourself and your group safer.

Armies used mines of course, there were whole areas covered with mine fields, some urban areas also were covered with all different kind explosive things, booby traps.

In some areas where soldiers had open terrain in front of them, or terrain with bush, and if they planted mines there, they usually throw all kind of empty cans, like food cans or anything similar. As we understanded at that time they used that in order to confuse enemy if they coming during the night trough the mine field with mine detectors.

But if the GOP elites think four more years of Obama will drive the Tea Party herd back into the corral, it’s making a serious miscalculation. Or, as Kwiatkowski writes, “By the time the GOP controllers realize that the Tea Party Constitution Liberty and Peace Train has left the station, the Grand Old Party will have gone the way of the Whigs in 1852.”

Here we go again. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) long awaited, much ballyhooed report on Iran’s nuclear activities has been thunderously greeted in North America as conclusive evidence that Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Tehran has long denied such claims. So, more tellingly, did a 2007 US combined intelligence assessment that rudely pulled out the rug from under the feet of the Bush-era neocons who were trying to engineer war with Iran. Now, they are back, in full fulmination mode.

There’s little new in this IAEA report, and a lot of déjà vu. We read the old story floating around since 2002 about a mysterious laptop stolen from Iran and passed to US intelligence. It allegedly contains scientific material about explosive compression methods to trigger a nuclear explosion, and designs to shrink nuclear warheads to fit in missile nosecones.

The UN and western powers say this stolen computer’s contents conclusively proves Iran has violated the UN’s non-proliferation treaty, to which Tehran is a signatory. Israel and its American partisans are raising a hue and cry about an impending nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran’s "crazy" leaders.

Iran says the laptop was concocted by Israel’s intelligence agency, which has been busy trying to sabotage Tehran’s enrichment plants and murdering Iranian scientists.

Speaking of crazy, as we saw during last week’s debates, Republicans are baying for war against Iran, seemingly heedless of the political, financial or economic risks involved. Israel, they chorus, is in mortal danger. For the Republican right, Israel often seems to be a more important issue than the United States.

Joe was asked to step aside because of his more controversial views ... he later said it didn't matter since he does not vote or encourage others to do so - the ballot box provides an excuse for politicians to take our rights and our money.

Remembrance

Execution of Colonel Ho Ngoc CanLast words: "If I won the war, I would not condemn you as you have condemned me.I would not humiliate you as you have humiliated me.I would not ask you questions that you asked me.I fought for the freedom of my people.I have merit and I am not guilty.No one can convict me.History will criticize you as my Communist enemy.You want to kill me, then kill me.Do not blindfold me.Down with the Communists.Long live the Republic of Viet Nam !"

Colonel CraigMandeville:

“They wanted the people to see that he was dead,” said Craig Mandeville, an American adviser to the South Vietnamese army who fought side by side with Can. “He was believed to be some sort of invincible guy. The North Vietnamese thought that, too, and I even thought that when I fought with him.”

“He said, ‘OK, the country’s fallen, but by God we’re still South Vietnamese and we’re free,’ ” Mandeville recalled. “So he went down to Chuong Tien province and rounded up all these soldiers down there to form a Free Vietnam.”

Col. Can didn’t live long after that, but the legacy of his struggle lives on.

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Core Creek Militia

==============================My sixth great grandfather, his wife, and five of his six children were killed in battle with the Tuscarora Indians at Core Creek, NC.

The Seven Blackbirds

==============================My third great grandfather was an Ensign in the Revolutionary War, and saved his unit's flag after being wounded at the Battle of Brandywine. He was also at Kingston (Kinston), Wilmington, Charleston, Two Sisters and Augusta. He was at the defeat at Brier Creek and also Bee Creek.

Requiem Aeternam -
Eternal Rest Grant unto Them
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My second great grandfather was killed in action on May 3, 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
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My great grandfather and great uncle knew all the men in the "Civil War Requiem" video as they were part of the 53rd NC which was the sole unit defending Fort Mahone. (Fort Mahone was named "Fort Damnation" by the Yankees) *Handpicked men of the 53rd (My great grandfather was one of these) made the final, night assault at Petersburg in an attempt to break Grant's line. This was against Fort Stedman which was a few miles to the slight northeast. They initially succeeded, but reinforcements drove them back. This video is made from photographs which were taken the day after the 53rd evacuated the lines the night before to begin the retreat to Appomattox. I have many more pictures taken by the same photographer, one of these shows a 14 year old boy and the other is the famous picture of the blond, handsome soldier with his musket.
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*General Gordon promised the men a gold medal and 30 days leave if they accomplished their task and many years after the War my great grandfather wrote General Gordon, who was then governor of Georgia about this incident. They exchanged several letters which I have framed. See first link below.
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*The Attack On Fort Stedman
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"His Colored Friends"
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Lee's Surrender
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My Black NC Kinfolks
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Punished For Being Caught!

Great Grandfather Koonce

He was a drummer boy in the WBTS, survived the War only to die a few years later. He was caught in an ice storm on his way home, but instead of seeking shelter, continued on his horse until the end. His clothes had to be cut off and he died a few days later.